Page 616 of End Game

I give him a look. “You didn't ask me to memorize a clock before you beat my ass.”

“No, but you know who you are, where you are, and what day it is. That is sufficient.”

The clinical phrasing should annoy me.

Instead, it makes warmth spread through my chest because of course he has a system for this. Of course he is checking how far I came back without making the check feel like panic.

I eat more of the bar.

By the time I finish it, my head feels attached properly again.

My body feels like somebody else's problem.

Not in a bad way.

Heavy. Used. Warm. My skin pulls when I move, and sitting upright sends a slow pulse through the marks that makes my stomach tighten.

Ronan helps me shift without taking over the movement.

When I'm sitting mostly on my own, he pulls the blanket higher around my shoulders and then looks down toward my thighs.

His fingers hover before touching. “Can I check?”

“Yeah.”

He moves the blanket enough to look.

Cool air brushes hot skin, and I suck in a breath before I can stop it.

Ronan's expression changes in assessment.

His fingertips move around the worst areas rather than over them, tracing the borders with almost absurd gentleness compared to the way those same hands held the strap.

“You're definitely going to bruise.”

“I know.”

“Some of it significantly.”

“I know.”

His gaze lifts. “Do you still want that?”

The answer lives in my body before I say it.

The ache is not background anymore now that I'm upright. It pushes against me every time I shift my weight, a physical memory written beneath my skin.

Tomorrow I will feel it when I pull on jeans.

When I sit at my station.

When I bend over a client.

When my phone buzzes.

Something inside me twists at that last thought.

I look back at Ronan.